Personal Photographic Projects: discovering your own vision

How do you develop your own unique photographic style? How do you find passion in your photography? How do you advance from a bunch of random images to a cohesive body of work?

In this class you will learn how to choose and develop self-assigned photographic projects. Photographic projects are great tools to help you advance the quality and depth of your images, and create a body of work that develops out of your own interests and passions. Projects also help you to begin thinking in terms of series of photos, rather than single images, and to develop a body of photographs that has more structure, and personal meaning.

The class is organized around a set of key word/concepts called A Playbook for Photography Projects, and will cover the topics of preparation, passion, practice, purpose, place, participation, persistence, and presentation. I will also show photos from some of my own projects, both short and long term, and describe the strategies behind their creation and development.

Dale Leifeste, a member and assistant organizer of the Florida Center for Creative Photography, has been photographing since he received his first camera in 1964.

He taught photography and Adobe Photoshop at Westchester Community College in New York from 1976 until his retirement 2007, including Introduction to Photography, Black & White Darkroom, Studio Lighting, Portrait Photography, and Introductory and Advanced Photoshop. His photography has been widely published, and shown in solo and group exhibitions in Italy, China, Japan, and many locations in the United States.